Suture is commonly used during open and closed (endoscopic) surgery. One of the more challenging aspects of using suture is passing the suture through tissue to be sutured and retrieving the suture so that it can be tied to a selected location, to a suture anchor or otherwise manipulated to treat the target tissue.
Suture hooks are cannulated needles which are able to be pierced through tissue. One end of a length of suture may be passed through the lumen of the cannulated needle in antegrade fashion in order to pass the suture from a point exterior to the surgical work site and through the tissue to be sutured. The needle can then be removed and a suture snare, grasper or similar device may then be used to engage the end of suture passing through the tissue and position it also at an accessible point away from the work site near the other end of the suture. The two suture ends may then be tied or otherwise manipulated to treat the tissue. Such devices are commonly used during arthroscopic surgical procedures. The use of such known surgical instruments is complicated by the fact that they must be sequentially used thereby requiring extra steps and additional time which increases the overall complexity and duration of the surgical procedure. Other art in the field of the present invention is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 6,966,914 (Abe); U.S. Pat. No. 5,234,445 (Walker et al.); U.S. Pat. No. 3,877,434 (Ferguson et al.); U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,741 (Dulebohn) and U.S. Pat. No. 3,791,387 (Itoh).
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to produce a surgical instrument which combines the suture passing and suture retrieving functions.